Automotive technology teacher, Robert Herring, and his students park cars at the football games for our school and the opposing school.

One reason that they park the cars is to make sure that there are no wrecks and nobody gets hurt.

“We make sure nothing goes wrong while they’re parking,” student Chris Sparks said. “The tennis court parking lot doesn’t have lines for people to park, so we create lines to make sure there are no accidents and we do it because it makes the school safer.”

Not only is parking cars a good thing, helping the other school is too.

“We’re one of the only schools who do it and it shows the other schools respect and makes them feel welcome,” Herring said. “We escort their buses in, we get them placed and escort the people from the bus to the stadium, and that way they’re safe and they don’t have the chance of getting run over.”

The other reason they do all this is to help out auto tech in general.

“We park cars to help raise money for our competitions; we go to Waco for our district and state competitions,” student Dayna Stinson said. “We need funding for the products we use to get there and for the trip there and back, and food.”

They raise money because the athletic department pays them as an organization.

“They support us by paying us to park cars,” Herring said. “It’s a way for us to keep doing this.”

Our parking lots are crowded and it’s hard to find a spot. And in places like these, it’s easy for wrecks to occur, that’s a big part of why auto tech is doing this.

“The community drives them in, and we park them safely,” Herring said. “We haven’t had a wreck in over 20 years.”